The Outer Limits (TV Series) Counterweight (1964) User Reviews

Are We Ready Yet?

[telegonus · 7/10 · 10 November 2010]

There appears to be a general consensus that Counterweight isn't one of the better entries of The Outer Limits series, and worse, that it's bad even by the standards of the second season. Ouch! That's harsh.

I've seen the show twice and enjoyed it both times. Set aboard a fake spaceship designed to test the limits of endurance of its various passengers, in other words to see if we can hack it in outer space, see how long people can stay confined in one place before they go mad, the episode is quite dramatic at times, and very well acted.

As is usual with such experiments on The Outer Limits, things don't go according to plan. Without giving away the ending I think it's fair to say that there are forces at work that those who set up the experiment didn't and couldn't foresee. Is man ready for outer space travel? This episode doesn't really answer the question so much as it rephrases it.

I think we are. As I see it, it's not a matter of whether humans are ready for space travel as which humans are ready and how far we can go. Obviously, we must choose carefully whom we send into outer space.

Flawed Humans Must Evolve

[andyetris · 5/10 · 6 October 2008]

A group of people participate in a group-isolation test to see if they can withstand being sent to a distant planet. Although they know they will be subject to unexpected tests, strange events strain their unity, and when personality changes start to happen, certain members break down in paranoia - or IS it paranoia?

This isn't one of the best episodes, but the story actually moves a bit better than some. However the characterization never evolves above stereotypes and not a lot makes real sense. None of the characters are particularly engaging, and as usual the female characters are the weakest. Disappointing.

"The worst dangers are the ones we make ourselves."

[classicsoncall · 6/10 · 5 July 2022]

Two hundred sixty one days equates to just under nine months, which was the length of time a group of six volunteers agreed to take part in a simulated space flight to the planet Antheon. My first thought was who has that much time to spare to depart from their daily lives and duties to get involved in something that's not even real, but simply a test to see if they could deal with the actual thing. Following an introduction of the characters, things start to go awry when an illuminated dagger of light arrives and appears to enter the minds of the crew while they sleep, leaving a subliminal thought in each of them that might threaten the success of the experiment. There's a 'panic button' handy for anyone who feels they can't take it anymore, but if pressed, negates the opportunity for any of them to ever participate in the exercise ever again, much less an actual trip to Antheon. A number of unexplained anomalies occur in the story, like the appearance of a doll once owned by Dr. James (Crahan Denton) now deceased daughter, and the sudden transformation of Dr. Alicia Hendrix (Jacqueline Scott) into a man hungry vamp. All the while, a freak plant from the on-board botany lab begins to uncoil and makes its presence known as a defender of Antheon, troubled by the devious nature of humans and especially that of obnoxious passenger Joe Dix (Michael Constantine), who's designs for the planet include making millions in construction fees. It was only fitting then, that the alien resembling a monster fiddlehead fern forced Dix to push the panic button to end this episode, thus insuring that future expeditions to Antheon would be rendered moot. No need to make the observation that this was a somewhat pointless story as other reviewers have already done so. The one unique thing about it was the introduction of the characters during the end credits with the names of the actors who portrayed them, which departed from the usual closing practice.

Weakest of the series...

[rixrex · 27 July 2009]

This episode doesn't air too often, and it's not a wonder as it is the weakest episode I recall from the series.

It's an interesting setup - six people on board a simulated 200+ day space flight that would take them to another planet, if they can get past the simulation. Of course, the typical stereotypes are on board, obnoxious business tycoon, repressed but attractive spinster, cynical reporter, and more.

But that's one of the main problems with this episode, they are just stereotypes and nothing more. In fact, the most interesting character of all is the alien being that seeks to disrupt the simulation so that the actual flight to its planet will not occur.

Jacqueline Scott lives up to her reputation as the very attractive single woman who is ready for a relationship. She's practically a twin of Diane Lane, of course she's older, still you get the idea. Worth a look for her performance, and that's about it.

See What Happens When Six Are Thrown to the Wolves

[Hitchcoc · 6/10 · 19 January 2015]

Six characters are put on a space ship simulator. They are told that if they don't press a panic button (which will release everyone), they will reap huge financial benefits. Things go along fine (despite Michael Constantin's boorish character) for some time. But soon things begin to happen on board. Constantin believes he has been attacked and nearly strangled. He is found fighting with bed covers. Other challenges include a poor man who lost is daughter. A doll like the one she had appears in the man's bed. There is a sudden loss of oxygen and people collapse. One of the women on board, a rather plain female scientist, realizes that she is growing old and barren and so she comes on to the men on board. The situation is quite good but the way things play out is really ludicrous.

Throw a whole bunch of people into a room and hope something interesting happens....

[planktonrules · 6/10 · 1 July 2012]

The above summary could refer to the plot of "Counterweight" or it could refer to what the folks from "The Outer Limits" might have been thinking when they made this episode. The idea seemed only fair and perhaps with some very good acting and a little action it would work. But, in my estimation, it worked but only just...

The show begins with six men and two women aboard a mock space ship. Their job is to simulate what a long space voyage might do to them psychologically--and the idea is to prove they are ready for this when it actually takes place. But, early into the experiment, weird things start happening---weird things that might indicate some outside force is manipulating them in ways they never could have expected.

Aside from a decent twist at the end, this episode did very little for me other than to establish (no surprise here) that people are stupid. Not a bad episode but far from a memorable one either.

The unique creature and whose who character actors make this a good watch.

[b_kite · 6/10 · 27 March 2022]

A random group of people (six men, two women) are selected to take part in a simulated flight to a far away alien planet. We are told that the flight is a test and will take 261 days and pays the passengers well as give the pilot a chance to man the first trip to the planet. Everything starts out well, but a series of strange events soon lead to paranoia and anger and the passengers soon learn there not alone on the flight. This is overall a pretty decent episode, it at times feels slow and the payoff at the end isn't anything mind blowing, but the message of man's inability to learn as well as destroy and kill has been done before but works fine here. The creature (which is my profile pic by the way) is unique and one of my favorites that and the abundance of whose who character actors makes this a good watch.

Not one of the better Outer Limits episodes

[mackaroni · 4/10 · 27 October 2009]

This episode was indicative of how much weaker the second season of The Outer Limits became after the departure of creative geniuses Joseph Stefano and Leslie Stevens. I found this story to drag on as we continued to watch this strange miniature blob of light enter into each of the passengers of this simulated space flight changing their personalities. Even the great character actor Michael Constantine and fine actress popular from the 60's Jacqueline Scott didn't fare too well and didn't help to improve this episode much. The one scene that sort of freaked me out and probably the best scene was when the plant turns into some unusual creature. I think they have tried this before in some science fiction movies and possibly The Outer Limits might have given some of these film writers the idea but this still was not one of the better episodes of this fine series. One unique thing that I hadn't noticed in any of the other episodes was at the end when they actually read off the names of the actors and the characters they played. This again shows the uniqueness of this unusual series but unfortunately how it was beginning to fade away and lose some of its popularity from the very powerful and stronger first season. This story had potential to be an extremely interesting one but somehow the way it was handled and edited dragged on and just watching this alien blob of light go from person to person started to become a bit monotonous.

Lightweight more like

[ShadeGrenade · 4/10 · 21 September 2009]

Six people board a spacecraft bound for the planet Antheon. They are not alone - also along for the trip is a strange alien creature that resembles a lightning bolt - and it engineers paranoia and mistrust amongst the passengers.

But wait! It turns out that they are not in space after all, but on a mock-up as part of a training exercise to see who can endure the real interplanetary voyage. After a number of strange events including meteor storms and physical attacks, they are ready to ( literally ) press the Panic button when the alien possesses a plant specimen brought aboard by a botanist, transforming it into a hideous monster...

Last year, 'Dr.Who' did a remarkably similar story to this, entitled 'Midnight'. It drove me up the wall ( and I speak as a loyal fan of the show ), especially as the 'monster' consisted of Lesley Sharp repeating everyone else's lines ad nauseam. 'Counterweight' is not quite as bad, but still requires a superhuman effort to sit through.

Based ( loosely ) on a short story by Jerry Sohl, it shoots itself in the foot early on ( with the disclosure that the passengers are not in space ) and never really recovers. The low point is Dr.Alicia Hendrix' brief ( and unconvincing ) transformation into a necklace-twirling floozy, requiring actress Jacqueline Scott to utter gibberish like: "I must work to forget the children I've never borne!".

Things perk up near the end with the arrival of the monster ( and how the 'Dr.Who' episode badly needed one of those! ). Here we get some nice stop motion effects, but by then you may have dropped off. The Antheon does not want humans on his planet, and has deliberately sabotaged the training exercise. If they are all as one-dimensional as this bunch, then no wonder. The final shot shows the same people boarding a real spacecraft to the accompaniment of a wailing Harry Lubin composition, while the cast's names and characters are spelt out individually.

Sohl was so unhappy with the treatment of this ( and 'The Invisible Enemy' ) story that he reportedly refused to watch the finished product. Wise fellow!

In the hands of, let's say, Rod Serling.....

[hung_fao_tweeze · 4/10 · 16 January 2015]

...this would been a great character study and more than likely a far more interesting episode.

It has a 'made for the theater' aura since the set is an obvious sound-stage with rather sparse accommodations. 6 people (5 men and one woman) as actual passengers, plus 1 stewardess and a pilot. The idea is to see how Joe-average handles the stress and confinement of a long interplanetary flight. Each passenger has a claustrophobic cubbie containing a bed and a small storage area. Each has a curtain that can be drawn for privacy. Snoring, etc, quickly becomes and issue.

No idea where the stewardess or the pilot sleep. They are mostly incidental characters anyway and are used when helpful to the plot.

There is the impression that the 'ship' is larger than what is displayed. The passengers do frequent a sort of lounge, dining, library area. It is humorous to see that they'd stocked a rather large, and weighty, library of books.

Meanwhile, when the passengers sleep, a strange illuminated alien presence in the form of a jagged serpent tongue about 6 inches long slides from bunk to bunk, enters the sleeper's heads and monitors their dreams. What's the point? This is not entirely clear yet and the sleeper's revelations are, shall we say, ultimately succinct yet mundane. Each sleeper is easily defined by these revelations but they are not necessarily that interesting. Obviously the intention here is do character studies of flawed human beings - the more interesting ones being a power hungry but frightened businessman, and an aging woman who is becoming all too aware that her clock is ticking. I have seen this episode a few times and for some reason all of the other characters are unmemorable. Having said that, this is where I began thinking how incredible Rod Serling was at writing these kinds of things and how that was missing here. Ultimately the characters here are cardboard representations with little to no depth except for the power hungry businessman who is played by Michael Constantine and this is perhaps why he stood out over the lesser roles.

While the episode churns and the days drag into months, the characters have the expected personality conflicts. As it turns out, there are little surprises pre-programmed into this experiment. Things like strange noises, shaking spaceship, power failures and such were designed into the routine to stir things up and even frighten the passengers so that perhaps one of them will push the panic button and end the experiment. They are determined to see it through - especially Constantine who has set up a lucrative business wager/venture that will pay off big if the experiment is a success --- so you know he is not afraid to threaten to kill the first person to push the panic button. But there is a more sinister side. Other little surprises occur that were NOT programmed into the mix. Who is setting those off??? It is not difficult to figure that one out.

What is difficult to accept is how a botanist who has a small sequestered garden is grieving over his dying plants but fails to notice that one very peculiar fuzzy coiling foot-long obelisk is rudely jutting up from the soil. Anyone else would question the existence of this oddity. He pays it no attention at all and whines about the audacity of his plants refusing to thrive. This is confusing in the respect that as soon as the viewer sees its threatening presence, you just know that this will be a problem waiting to happen.

Eventually the alien plant becomes animate and confronts the passengers to pass along a message a la 'The Day The Earth Stood Still'. In fact, some of the stop-motion work here is good.

The passengers listen to the message and then make a decision which I won't reveal here but it isn't difficult to figure out. End of episode.

Bottomline : Kind of a dull episode that could had every opportunity to be far more interesting and logical but didn't. This is generally thought to be one of the lesser OL episodes. It is simply because, as with most of season 2, an idea with some merit is fumbled by the new production team who seem to have no clue how to deal with science fiction.

A Disaster Movie Before The Term Was Invented

[StuOz · 19 July 2014]

A mixed bunch of people are put in a mock spaceship.

I am a little surprised by the negative reviews this hour is getting around here. I thought Counterweight is okay...but nothing great.

I am a disaster movie-lover, this genre of film usually contains a mixed bag of people stuck in a confined place with a problem facing them all: sound like something?

So I am more than comfortable with this episode. It took a few repeat viewings before I liked the final moments of the episode but all things considered...there were in fact six episodes of The Outer Limits that are a lot worse than this one!

Panic Button

[AaronCapenBanner · 4/10 · 17 March 2016]

A six person crew(played by Michael Constantine, Jacqueline Scott, Sandy Kenyon, Crahan Denton, Larry Ward, Charles Radilac) has volunteered to participate in the first simulated test space flight to the planet Antheon. There is even a panic button on board that, if pushed, will immediately end the flight, and any chance of their going on the real thing. The captain(played by Stephen Joyce) and stewardess(played by Shary Marshall) do what they can to help, but paranoia and personality clashes emerge, threatening the success of this experiment, as some malignant force seems determined to stop the mission... Tedious episode misfires much like the flight itself, though the monster is nicely done.

Incredibly inept writing destroys this episode.

[fedor8 · 5 January 2022]

One of the worst 5 episodes.

Another dumb one, this time from "Star Trek" alumni Jerry Sohl who had already screwed up his previous TOL non-effort, the incredibly dumb and cheesy "Invisible Enemy". In fact, both of these episodes most probably belong to the Top 5 Dumbest in the series.

Stupid characters, clunky preachiness, and incredibly silly dialogue get in the way of this anyway half-baked premise having a fighting chance to overcome its own illogic.

The worst character by far is the "evil capitalist" slob, played by Michael Constantine who is far more suitable to portray a NYC garbageman (or a low-level mobster) than an ambitious "builder of civilizations". He should have played Fred Flintstone instead: much more at home in the distant past than the distant future. His over-the-top behaviour already made me facepalm so hard that I nearly broke my skull. Sohl's writing is as subtle as using a sledgehammer to pummel a fly.

Then there is the "morally virtuous journalist" because, as we all know, journalists are FAMED for their integrity - at least according to left-wing Hollywood scribblers, some of whom had dabbled in journalism anyway. In fact, Sohl actually misuses Dixx (the garbageman mobster) by having him question the ethics of the journalistic profession, thereby trying to absolve journalism of the "cliche" that its practitioners "struggle with truth", as Dixx correctly puts it. This is so ironic, and stupid, i.e. Sohl using Dixx as a symbol of greed, evil and stupidity - yet he inadvertently gives him a line that very rightfully and correctly mocks journalism. (Considering how much worse journalists have become with each decade since the 60s, there is every chance that this particular journalist is even worse than the ones we have now, in the Age of Virtue-Signaling and fake news.)

Then there's the perpetually grinning botanist, but all he does is grin, so I'll just ignore him.

The worst politically-correct preachy moment is when someone brings up American Indians, just so Dixx can (very predictably) say something genocidal about them, further underlining that yes, capitalists are primitive psychopaths who talk like NY mobsters and look like Fred Flintstone! I'm not sure whether Elon Musk would agree... Predictably, and very SJJJW-ly, the "noble journalist" is instantly disgusted by Dixx's attitude toward the Indians. Anyone smell a daft, untalented, predictable, generic left-wing writer here? Everything's black-and-white with these propagandist hack writers. Their worldview is like that of a child.

Things get stupid very quickly. Already this concept of a simulated mission to an alien planet makes little sense. Why does it have to last nearly a year? Does this mean that if the real flight took 11 years to get there then the fake flight would also last 11 years? Wouldn't it be enough to test these people for a month or two? Or just send them to extensive psycho-evaluation? Is psychology of the future so backwards that there is zero trust in it? Would these ambitious, serious professionals with real careers really have that much time to throw away?

I was especially irritated by the rule that "if anybody presses the panic button, everybody is disqualified from the real flight". Wut...? Is Sohl trying to tell me that these very serious career people would be willing to waste almost a year - only to potentially get DQed because someone, through no fault of their own, pressed the button? Yeah, sign me up, please! I can imagine that millions would be scrambling to volunteer for such a low-odds chance at flying to a distant planet...

Dixx "Capitalist Pig" Flintstone picks up a gun at the end and threatens to kill the quasi-pilot... which would achieve what exactly? Ensure Dixx's place on the real mission?! That was a pretty bonehead move, but then again Dixx's character is supposed to be an imbecile, and he is presented as a street thug not a businessman. (So why was he approved for the test then?! Did they draw lots?) Although, to be fair to Dixx, it takes an imbecile writer to create such an imbecile character...

Dixx gets attacked by the goofy special-effect early on, a tiny floating hangman; as a result of this unprovoked attack Fred Flintstone has marks on his neck - as concrete proof. Yet, somehow, most of these "carefully chosen intelligent professionals" are suggesting/insisting that Dixx's wound is psychosomatic! So in effect Sohl had just unintentionally labeled everyone else as dumb too, not just the "evil capitalist" barbarian... Nice going, Jerry...

Speaking of which, what has Sohl against entrepreneurs and engineers? He must have taken too many classes at some Hollywood Communist workshop... Total nonsense. Even the Soviet Onion which Sohl probably sympathized with had need for engineers. Sohl should have been banished from walking on bridges and buying capitalist products at stores - with the money he earned trashing capitalism and engineers! These hypocrites need to live in caves - or North Korea.

The shenanigans continue when Dr Hendrix, the frustrated spinster, goes to Dr James's room (of all people) to... hold his hand. Minutes later, his daughter's doll is planted in James's room which infuriates him, turning him into a paranoid lunatic. Now, all these people knew already that this was an experiment, that they would be tested, so why do they keep suspecting only each other of sabotage? Logically, they should be far more suspicious of the quasi-pilot and the quasi-stewardess i.e. The people working for this pointless circus.

The latest point when the entire episode completely disintegrates under the weight of its nonsense is the lounge scene when a fight breaks out between "good" and "evil" (i.e. The journalist and the capitalist), to be interrupted shortly thereafter by the appearance of Hendrix - who'd suddenly turned into a kittenish, flirtatious harlot! After Dixx starts getting horny over her (literally three seconds upon seeing Hendrix) he simply forgets about the fight. At this point the episode lost any hope of redemption. This kind of bizarre scene is the result of an incompetent writer very clumsily trying to portray psychological breakdown within a small group pressured by difficult conditions and unusual circumstances. Sohl attempting this kind of "psychological depth" is akin to Ed Wood trying to write a novel that would rival anything that Mark Twain had written.

"He has reasons for loving that doll, just as you have reasons for wanting to be a woman," says the fake biologist who acts here as the resident psychologist, in what is definitely one of the dumbest lines in the entire series.

"You're a very pretty woman, Maggie, but you're as cold as a robot... I'm much more woman than you." That's another idiotic line, which comes completely out of left field, but is somehow supposed to work because Hendrix is going insane... Except that her drift into madness is handled very clumsily and unconvincingly. We don't get a proper, gradual, credible fall into madness but a rather sudden change of character instead. As if she had always been a schizophrenic, just managed to hide it well up to that point.

Journalist: "What are you?" Alien: "I am from planet Antheon!" Biologist: "Are you always like this?"

That was pretty amusing too. As was nearly everything said right after this. The conversation between Planimal and the hu-mans is absolutely hilarious. There are so many awesome "one-liners" that I simply can't be bothered to transcribe them all here. Suffice it to say that Sohl didn't just take too many Communism Brainwashing classes, but he must have also been an avid student in one of Ed Wood's Bad Screenwriting courses. I'm not exaggerating. The dialog is that stupid.

What exactly is the pilot's function? Apparently, to give speeches and feel superior.